On this day in 1982, the Reagan administration linked further progress in arms control talks with the Soviet Union to Moscow’s involvement in what it called “the continuing repression of the Polish people.” It marked a revival of the linkage diplomacy pursued earlier by Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser and secretary of state.

Washington was reacting to the decision in late 1981 by the Soviet-backed communist government in Warsaw to impose martial law in a bid to crush the Solidarity movement spearheaded by Poland’s labor unions.

Although Dean Fischer, the State Department spokesman, said the administration’s “interest in meaningful arms reduction negotiations, including reductions in strategic arms, is undiminished,” he went on to say that talks on reducing strategic nuclear arsenals “cannot be insulated from other events.”

“There can be no question but that the climate of East-West relations in turn has a serious effect upon the prospects for moving forward in arms control,” he added.

Moscow for its part maintained that Poland’s affairs remained an internal matter and that the United States, rather than the Soviet Union, had stoked Cold War tensions by interfering in Polish affairs.

President Ronald Reagan had called for negotiations on reducing intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe. Those talks began in November 1981 but bogged down as each side charged the other with acting in bad faith.

Arms control talks, however, were soon back on track. In June, revised plans were presented to the Soviets in Geneva after Reagan had signaled a fresh willingness to negotiate in a commencement address at Eureka College, his alma mater, on May 9.

Washington and Moscow signed a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in July 1991. START entered into force in December 1994. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a replacement treaty in Prague in 2010.